chrome and chromium won't play audio [SOLVED-in part]

[hunky]

I'm running unstable and last update or two (I assume) broke audio in google-chrome. I tried installing chromium as well with same result. They do play through youtube videos and show sound files as being played, but no audio. Firefox works just fine.

I was running VLC as multimedia backend and switched to gstreamer to see - but made no difference.

Chrome:plugins shows Adobe Flash Player-14.0.0.177
Emerge -s adobe-flash shows version 11.2.202.400

I don't have pulse-audio installed - using Alsa.

If I disable adobe-flash in chrome videos won't play - not sure how to get away from adobe-flash or if I need to.

No biggey as I can use Firefox but do use chrome - try to keep some of my social sites segregated with two browsers running.

advise most welcome, JD

[edit]: Used this to good effect: http://dallarosa.tumblr.com/post/19626256742/fixing-no-sound-in-browser-problem-on-linux Fixed chromium. Chrome is still broken - will play around some more on that one.